“Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. 16 For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham. 17 Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.” NASB
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. 16 For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. 17 For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.” NIV
We dedicated ample time in the previous sermon to establishing that Jesus was a man, born of a woman, and that He as Deity determined to enter the world in that way for the purpose of identifying with us in every way but the guilt of sin, and for the purpose of suffering and dying so that as the author of salvation He might bring many to glory.
The writer of this letter is not finished with that theme, for he goes on now to repeat the assurance that this One he is calling us to study carefully as Author of salvation, as Sanctifier, as the One who because of the suffering of death is crowned with glory and honor, really was flesh and blood just like the children previously referred to in verse 13.
This is why almost from the very first the devil has raised up deceived and deceitful men to teach that Jesus Christ was incorporeal; that He was spirit only, or a vision, or whatever else their twisted imaginations might come up with in order to deny His humanity.
It was only as a Man that He could have identified with us, it was only as a flesh and blood Man that He could have served as our High Priest, and wonder of wonders, it was only as a Man that He could have rendered the devil powerless.
Doesn’t that amaze you? It should! In the Garden of Eden as God confronted the man and the woman, He declared that one would be descended from the woman, her seed, who would be wounded by the serpent who would in turn be crushed by the seed.
That isn’t the way we would write the story, is it? No, we prove that even in our prayers. Paul is a Biblical example. Three times he prayed for a debilitating malady to be lifted from him. He wanted to be well. He wanted to be strong. So do we, don’t we? ‘Lord, heal me.’ ‘Lord, give me success in my business and promotion in my work’. ‘Lord, bless me with monetary gain so that I might use it to serve You’ (uh, huh…). ‘Lord, make this ‘thorn in the flesh’ leave me’.
But what seems to be His oft repeated response to that kind of praying?
“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” 2 Cor 12:9
That was true in and through the life of Paul and it is a principle that holds true universally. God’s power through our weakness accomplishes His purposes and brings glory to Him. Therefore it is this principle that is demonstrated in the life and sacrifice of God’s own Son, who became weak so that the power of God might be demonstrated.
THE INCARNATION WAS NECESSARY
I want to talk first today about why the incarnation was necessary.
I think that it is seldom considered by us that Jesus becoming man was a necessary thing. Most of our talk and our songs center around His desire to save and His grace in coming down to us. But there is ample Scriptural evidence, as we can see right here in our text, that in the economy of the Divine, His coming and dying were necessary, as was His resurrection and ascension.
First we think about the divine decree that death shall be the wage of sin.
God warned Adam in the Garden that the day he disobeyed God’s one and only command of restriction he would die, and die he did, spiritually, and began to die physically..
Every death since then has been a reminder that sin brings death.
The Scriptures also remind us constantly of this terrible truth. Ezekiel 18:4 says “The soul who sins will die” and it is God talking to His prophet.
We know Romans 6:23 which says that the wages of sin is death.
Here in the HEBREWS letter, (9:22) we find that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. The reference to the shedding of blood means death, and the reference to forgiveness means forgiveness of sins.
So the incarnation was necessary in that as God He could not save us without violating His justice, and of course He cannot violate His very nature and character. He is God and He is just, and the issue of sin could not go unaddressed, but since the wages of sin is death and God cannot die, He could not, as God, deal justly with sin unless He could find a man who was both sinless and willing to pay the penalty for all.
This calls Isaiah to mind:
“Now the LORD saw, And it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. 16 And He saw that there was no man, And was astonished that there was no one to intercede; Then His own arm brought salvation to Him, And His righteousness upheld Him.” Isa 59:15b-16
Breaking that passage down, it speaks of the Lord being amazed or appalled that there was no man to stand in the gap between man and God, between earth and Heaven, so His ‘own arm brought salvation to Him’, meaning He provided the way by His own power and working, and that His own righteousness was brought to bear on the problem of sin.
So in short, God had to become a Man so that He could die. Now since God can not ever be less than what He is, He could not leave His divinity behind and become a man born of man and woman. He had to be born of a woman to be a man, but He could not be born of a man also and be sinless, since the sin nature is the curse of all mankind. Therefore He had to be conceived by the Holy Spirit and so continue in His eternal and unchanging Godhood, but come in the likeness of sinful flesh, as we’re told in Romans 8, so that according to the Divine plan He might taste death for everyone.
Hey, folks, this is great stuff! This is exciting information! It is also indispensable truth for you and me to understand clearly. All of the world’s religions and philosophies come out of the evil heart of man and the demonic realm of influence, and every one of them, in some fashion, denies the things that I just went over here. They deny the deity of Jesus of Nazareth, they deny the necessity of the atonement and they deny the necessity of the incarnation to make that atonement. This is why they deny the virgin birth…
…and by the way, let me interject here that this is why I detest any Bible translation or paraphrase that uses the term ‘young woman’ in the place of ‘virgin’. It is also why it bothers me to hear intelligent and well-meaning Bible commentators and teachers point out that the original language can be translated both ways and then they do not have a problem with that.
The virgin birth of the Lord’s Messiah is an indispensable fact in the mapping out of God’s plan of salvation, and since there are those who deny it, we who believe should be very adamant about the wording of our Bibles and our testimony.
I don’t care if Mary was 14 or 41 when Gabriel came to her, what I do care about is that she was a virgin at the time and I want my Bible to say so, and I want you to know and believe that Jesus of Nazareth
was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
(Above taken from the Apostle’s Creed, which can be read in its entirety at the end of this sermon)
Let’s do away with this notion of toning down the difficult translations for easier reading. We need to know what it is we believe, and then stand by it with our life and if need be, our blood!
On the Emmaus road the risen Christ asked His forlorn disciples, “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and enter into His glory?” Lk 24:36
Yes, it was necessary. His suffering was necessary to carry out the plan of salvation and bring many sons to glory; His reentry into His glory was necessary because it vindicated God as both Just and Justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus, and established His glory and dominion and might and power and authority over all and through all for ever and ever.
All of that could only happen, could only be accomplished, through the incarnation; God-become-Man.
THE INCARNATION WAS POWERFUL
Next, the incarnation was powerful. Now this is not in conflict with what I said at the beginning about God’s power being perfected in weakness. In fact, what I said earlier is established by this fact.
In taking the form of a man, a bondservant as Philippians 2 says, He became weak in the sense of being subjected to temptation and the frailties of a human body. In so doing, the power of God was able to be manifest in and through Him and accomplish God’s purpose and show His glory.
“For indeed He was crucified because of weakness, yet He lives because of the power of God.” 2 Cor 13:4a
The purpose and result of the incarnation was that He rendered powerless him who had the power of death. Let me explain that.
The devil has never had the power or authority to administer life or death. What is being conveyed here is that he is the propagator and master of sin, and sin is the bringer of death, and so since he holds fallen men in his power they live under the fear of death, which they cannot avoid, cannot escape, cannot ward off or even accurately predict.
Men and women in this world live in unrelenting fear of death. They ignore it while they can, and they discuss and contemplate it only with trepidation. But when they are faced with it they wither under its weight.
They are slaves to the fear of death. But the Bible says, and once a person is born from above and has the Holy Spirit’s witness inside he or she simply knows, they are no longer a slave to that fear. Oh, there is for each of us a time for parting from this world and our loved ones and moving on, and there is some uncertainty about that because we’re going where we haven’t been…
When Joy Davidman, wife of C.S. Lewis (whose nickname from the time he was small was ‘Jack’), was lying on her deathbed with cancer, even though she had been a Christian for years and had even written books herself about Christianity, in a moment of uncertainty asked her husband, “Are you sure about all this ‘Heaven stuff’?” When he said that he was certain she replied, “You’d better be right, Jack”.
At times when I have contemplated my own departure and wondered when and how that would happen, I have been inclined to moments of distress for thinking about leaving my beloved wife and children behind. But then I stop and remind myself that my future is not determined by me, nor am I self-provided for. He has my future planned and He has prepared a place for me, and the One who has prepared a place for me has also assured me that since I am a believer in His Word and in the Father, for me there will be no judgment, and no death, because I have already passed out of death into life.
Believer in Christ, do you ever catch yourself fearing death?
Listen. If you’re on a rainy highway at night and you see the lights of a Semi-truck coming at you, of course you should fear. In a case like that fear is healthy as long as you act on that fear to try to avoid collision. But once that truck is in the rearview mirror and going down the road in the opposite direction continuing to fear it would be unnecessary and even silly.
Christ has delivered you from the truck, believer. Every moment you continue to live it gets farther and farther from you. You have life everlasting because of the power of the incarnation.
THE INCARNATION IS EFFICACIOUS
Finally, the incarnation is efficacious. I just love to use some of these words. It’s like saying Machu Picchu or Ricardo Montalban. They’re fun to say. But you have to know the meaning or fun as they are they do no good.
Efficacy, or efficacious simply means the power to produce a desired result.
The efficacy of the incarnation was that as a Man Christ was able to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
Propitiation is another of those words that can throw us. It means atonement. It means to stand between sinful men and Holy God and appease His righteous wrath against them.
The Old Testament priests stood in this place symbolically by taking the blood of the sacrifice into the Holy of Holies and sprinkling it on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, thus covering their sins and the sins of the people for another year. This was a type of what was to come in Christ.
What the incarnation provided for was that Christ was able to shed His own blood and die, standing between sinful men and Holy God as the final and perfect sacrifice for sin. He made atonement or propitiation for the people.
Listen to Ray Stedman on this:
“The fact that he made atonement for the sins of the people lifts him to an incomparable level of priestly help. No priest under the law could do that, except in a symbolic and token fashion. But Jesus not only holds forth the hope of finding forgiveness of sins, he has actually taken them away already! To be able to be both merciful toward sinners and faithful to a holy God is possible only because the offense of sin before God has been removed.” Ray C. Stedman HEBREWS, Intervarsity Press, 1992
The efficacy of the incarnation is that by becoming a Man Christ was able to act as merciful and faithful High Priest serving in the giving of His own life in sacrifice, to stand between men and God and reconcile them once more. He was merciful to sinners, while remaining faithful to the Father.
Now there is something to be made clear about the phrase, ‘For since He Himself was tempted in that which He suffered’.
We know that Jesus never sinned. He said to His disciples in John 14:30, “…the ruler of this world is coming and he has nothing in Me”. What He meant by saying that on the last night He and His disciples were together, was that the Devil was coming to carry out through evil men what God had planned and ordained, that being the crucifixion of His Son. But in saying ‘he has nothing in Me’, Jesus was saying that Satan had no valid charge against Him because He had done no sin, and also that Satan had no power to tempt Him to sin since Jesus had no sin nature to appeal to.
So in our text when it says He was tempted in that which He suffered, it is a reference to His humanity and all the suffering that comes with being human. He faced the trials of physical life, He underwent the discomforts of physical life, He suffered the ordeal of walking in a sin-affected world, He suffered rejection and torture and the pain of death.
The incarnation was necessary for Him to undergo these temptations; these sufferings. But because of His suffering God’s power was demonstrated in and through Him to provide atonement and eternal life for all who believe. Because of His temptations and suffering the fear of death is going down the road in the rearview mirror for all who believe. His suffering was efficacious to provide a sympathizer, a comforter, an advocate for all who are His, since He is able to identify with them in every way apart from the guilt of sin.
And Christian, I want you to know today that when the writer says “He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted”, he means something that should give us the greatest and surest assurances of help.
He is able to come to our aid when we suffer the daily pangs of life in that we have a Comforter who understands.
He is able to come to our aid when we are rejected or lied to or disdainfully treated in that the Suffering Servant who bore our stripes and our nails has Himself suffered at the hands of men.
He is able to come to our aid when we are tempted to sin in that He faced the evil one in the wilderness when He was hungry and tired and alone and answered all his barbs with Scripture and won the day – and He now lives in us to help us answer the evil one and He lives at the Father’s right hand to be our Advocate.
Christian, this is why the writer tells us to consider Him. Look at chapter 3 verse 1 and remember that these divisions are not divine, they are put there by men. The writer said all these things about the incarnate Christ and then he said, “Therefore”.
Therefore, you who are sanctified and made holy by the atoning work of our merciful and faithful High Priest…
Therefore, you who are called like the rest of us to a place He has prepared for you, purchased by His own blood…
Consider Jesus. Consider Jesus.
That word ‘consider’ bears the idea of intense study. It would be used of someone intently gazing into the night sky trying to count every star; study every detail of the configuration of planets and systems.
The writer wants you and me to fix our eyes and our hearts on this Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.
As Man He is the Apostle, or the Messenger, bringing hope and the knowledge of the way to the Father.
As High Priest, He is the one whose blood has opened the way in to the Holiest of All.
Consider Him then. Study Him intently. Look to Him and stand firm in your confession of faith.
His incarnation was necessary so that He could pay for your sin. His incarnation was powerful in that He made atonement between you and a Holy God. His incarnation was efficacious in that it established you in a place of welcome before the Throne forever.
It is done and you have been made partakers of a heavenly calling that can never change because it is the Father’s plan and Christ’s work and the Holy Spirit’s application to you.
As we go on to study this epistle, let us remind ourselves often of this exhortation to ‘consider Jesus’ and ask God to fill us up with the fullness of Him who for us became poor that He might make us rich; who became the weakness of flesh in order to make us sharers in the highest of all callings.
THE APOSTLE’S CREED
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
